My daughter says her favorite day of the year is not Christmas, not her birthday, but Dec. 21st, because it’s the shortest day, and after that day, light begins to return to her world.
She doesn’t like living in the dark.
Of course there are times when dark is important. I like to sleep in a dark room. Sometimes it’s romantic to turn out all the lights and dine by candlelight. But most of us are not overly fond of the dark. We lose our way in the dark. We bump into things, we can’t see what’s out there, what might hurt us. Darkness makes us very vulnerable.
So this time of the year is exactly the right time to celebrate the coming of light, which is the meaning of the Feast of the Epiphany. Epiphany means “manifestation.” We celebrate the arrival, the showing up, the coming of the Light of Christ into our world.
The people of Israel spent long years in exile, and when they finally were allowed to return to their homeland, they found it in ruins. The walls were breached, the towers toppled. The fields lay barren and dry. Their world was in darkness.
But the poet and prophet we call Isaiah would not let them sink into black despair.
“Arise, shine,” he said, “for your light has come.” He acknowledged the presence and reality of the darkness, but told the people that such dark and devastation is not God’s plan for Jerusalem. The city will rise again, its inhabitants will themselves become radiant, and nations will be drawn “to your light.”
If darkness is the place of fear, then light is the place of hope.
In Matthew, wise men followed the light of a star. They had heard that a new light had come into the world, that there would be hope for God’s people to live in a different and better way.
And Jesus Christ was born – a new, a different kind of king.
He was not rich, not powerful, had no armies, and no power recognized by earthly authorities. But he lived in the Light of God’s love, and everywhere he went, people were touched by that light. When they were touched, their lives were changed, because in the coming of the light, they let go of fear and found hope.
Today’s world is full of darkness. The elaborate financial systems constructed across the centuries have begun to crumble. People have lost jobs and cannot find new ones. Families have been forced out of their homes. Hunger roams the world, not only the small, third world countries, but even right here, in our own land.
Our need for light is almost overwhelming.
Thus we celebrate. Tonight we remember that God did send light into the world, in the person of Jesus Christ. The babe in a manger grew to manhood, met the world’s darkness and went with it, into the depths of the tomb. And then he rose. Darkness and death will never be the end of the world again.
In the church we rehearse that history at every Eucharist, remembering that his body was broken, that Christ has died, but Christ IS risen, and Christ WILL come again. At every baptism, we ourselves are buried with him in death, and rise to newness of life. That means that right now, in this moment, we are the Body of Christ, we are the light of the world. It is not something any one of us can do or be by ourselves. Only together are we the Body, only when we work together can Christ be re-membered, the hungry fed, and the blind given grace to see. God is the source of all light and if we will live in that light, then that light will shine through us, and in God’s time and in God’s will, the kingdom will come and the darkness of the world will be dispelled.